>> history bookshelf features popular american writers and airs on american history tv. 35 years og, on november 4 1979 iranian students stormed the embassy in iran. john limbert was one of the hostages held for 14 months. in his book, "negotiating with iran," he discusses the history of u.s.-iran relations and his time in captivity. we interviewed him at the u.s. naval academy in annapolis where he teaches international affairs. >> john limbert, in your book, "negotiating with iran: wrestling the ghosts of history," you talk about four crisis in u.s.-iranian history. >> two of the crisis are actually prerevolution, two postrevolution. the first was the crisis over

the northwest area after world war ii. many believe that is where the cold war started. the second was the oil crisis of 1951 and 1953, in which the iranians attempted to assert control over their major economic resource. in the end, the effort was frustrated, in part because of a cia sponsored coup against the iranian leader. the second two occurred after the islamic revolution. the first was something i was involved in personally, which was the hostage crisis from 1979 until 1981. and the second was the crisis involving the hostages, american and others, held in lebanon during the 1980's and a part of

that, an incident that touched this institution here at the navelnaval academy, what is commonly known as irangate or iran contra. >> let's go back to the first one. you say the cold war is often thought to have begun in crisis. what do you mean by that? >> what had happened is the allies the british and the russians in september '41, had occupied iran as a supply line to the soviet union, which was fighting for its life against nazi germany. the u.s. joined that occupation after the u.s. joined the war. after the war the russians did not leave, as they had agreed to do. and instead, they set up a

separatist movement in the northwest, which first demanded autonomy from iran. that crisis was the first item on the docket of the newly formed united nations. and of the first five resolutions of the u.n. security council, beginning in january 1946, three of those five involved iran and azerbijan. >> what role did the cia play in iran in the 1950's? >> well, that's a good question. i don't have any details. many iranian friends of mine think i know more than i do about the operations of the cia. people will argue about this endlessly. what we do know is that in early

1953, president eisenhower inheriting a difficult situation from president truman gave the order to plan an operation inside iran, gave an order to the cia to plan an operation to bring down prime minister mosedef, and to replace him with someone who was believed to be more in accordance with our interests. >> so what was the final outcome? did the prime minister get replaced? did the shah come on the throne at that time? how did that happen? >> it's a fascinating story. the shah in fact was reluctant

to move against him. he was presented with a plan prime minister mosedeh, with a military man. the shah did not like the military man very much and didn't want to see a military man, thinking he might be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. he was persuaded. there are stories that the way he was persuaded was that he was told this is going ahead with or without you. that mosedef will be replaced. if it goes with you, so much the better. if it does not, then you will be looking for a job elsewhere. and he eventually was persuaded to go along with it. >> so professor, when you look

at that crisis, before we move on to the other two, when you look at that crisis, what kind of attitude did that help to develop among the iranians toward the west? >> specifically towards the united states -- the iranians traditionally had a very pessimistic view toward the british. the british, after all, had participated in dividing the country into spheers spheres of influence in the early 20th century. they were part of the race for resources within iran. they took a very lucrative oil confession back in the early 20th century, essentially bought it for nothing and continued their control over iran's one resource that it had, and dictated terms to the iranians.

for example, back in the 30's, the iranians said, you know, we should renegotiate this, and we want to take a look at the books of this company which operates here in iran. and the british said, oh, no, no, you can't do that. that's proprietary information. we will decide the accounting. we will do the accounting and we will give you a check for an amount that we decide is due to you. this was the situation. toward the -- the united states up until that time, was seen in iran as a friend of the national movement. the iranian nationalism, you could say, or struggle for iranians to become masters in their own house, to get control of their own destiny started perhaps late in the 19th century, early in the 20th century. and although the united states

was not a big player in the struggle, when we did play, we were usually on the right side. there's several very famous incidents when a young american teacher by the name of howard baskerville was killed fighting on the side of the constitutionalists. this was 1909. in 1911, president taft sent morgan schuster to help constitutionalists get control of the budget, get control of the country's finances, because they knew without that, they were nothing and they had no chance. that was also frustrated. the u.s. was seen as playing a very positive role in the azerbijan crisis and helping iran to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity. 1953 and what happened with the coup unfortunately, changed all

that. one can argue why that happened how that happened, were there reasons for it, but at that point, basically the u.s. changed its role in the iranian view from being a friend and supporter of iranian nationalism to being something of the new great britain. >> in negotiating with iran, you talk about misjudgments on both sides when it comes to the 1979 hostage crisis. what are some of those misjudgments? >> well, there were several. one, perhaps on our side, was the idea that the united states and iran could in fact, after this revolution, rebuild some kind of a relationship.

on our side, based on anti-communism anticommunist and anti-soviet imperatives and that iran's traditional dislike of communism and of russian expansion would create a set of interests allowing for at least a certain degree of cooperation not what had happened under the shah but at least a new basis for engagement. in that case, i think we misread what in fact was going on within the iranian revolution, where those people who were in control had no intention of having such a relationship with the united states, not that they liked the soviet union very much, but they just did not want to have that kind of relationship. i think on the iranian side,

there was the view that the united states was out to undermine this revolution at all costs, where in fact the united states had other interests, and as far as i could tell, was perfectly willing to accommodate whatever the new reality was in iran. >> november 1979, where were you? what were you doing? and what was the biggest event happening in your life at that point? >> well, that was almost 33 years ago, almost 33 years ago today. we're just a month short of that date. i was in tehran serving at the embassy. >> in what capacity? >> as a political officer. this was i think my second or third tour, third tour maybe, in the foreign service. so i was still fairly new in the

service. and what we were doing was, as i said, attempting to figure out if there was some way that the united states could come to terps with the new -- come to terms with the new reality in iran. about ten days before, we learned that president carter had decided to admit the shah to the u.s. for medical treatment. >> did you think that was a mistake from over there? >> i certainly did. i wasn't the only one. that was the end of any chance of a halfway normal relationship. it was the end for any chance for any moderation within the new iranian government, and perhaps most important, personally, it was the end of us. >> did you know that ahead of time? did you know there would be some

action? >> we didn't know what, but essentially when we heard this, and it wasn't just me, the sense was -- the message was you're expendable. our collective goose was cooked. >> so the day of the takeover, walk us through it. >> the day of the takeover was a sunday first day of our workweek. there were demonstrations already scheduled in tehran. one of the routs of the demonstrations was from east to west, right in front of our embassy. one of the groups preplanned as we know, they stopped, shouted slogans. >> students, soldiers? >> students. these were mostly, as i learned later, engineering students, people from the tehran university engineering school, the polytechnic.

and instead of continuing marching toward part of the area of the demonstration, they attacked the embassy and came over the wall. we were essentially defenseless. there was a provisional government in iran which had no power to defend us. there were some people at the embassy in police uniforms who disappeared as soon as the attack came, the iranians, because of course it is the -- it was the iranian government, as would be true in any country where the host government is responsible for the security of a foreign mission. >> so, professor limbert, were there marine guards? >> there were marine guards. >> were they allowed to fire? >> no. fortunately. that was probably one of the best decisions. to this day, i feel i owe my life to their good discipline

and training. the group attacking us, as far as we could tell was not armed. they were not shooting at us. so one of the priorities became avoiding bloodshed. >> where were you in the embassy? >> i was inside the embassy. >> were you watching all this happen? >> we were watching this happen. and then we moved behind a hard line, what we call a hard line which is a sealed heavy door on the top floor. i should point out that it was not only about -- we were not only about 70 americans but we were an equal number, if not more iranian employees whom we were also responsible for. but once again, let me take our hat off to -- my hat off to our young marine guards, whose discipline and training really saved all our lives that day. >> john limbert, what about --

prior to that, were you burning embassy papers documents anything like this? >> we had far too much paper in the embassy. we destroyed as much of it as we could. you've probably seen the pictures of the reconstituted documents. what happened is the destruction was a two-stage process in those days. the technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. so what happened was the first stage was to turn to paper into pasta. then confetti. the second stage is break it down. the skill that has gone into making persian carpets for hundreds of years, they wove it

back together, at least what they saw as the most sensitive of documents. they recovered a lot of things undamaged, which they published in about 70 volumes both english and persian indexed classified. i mean, it's quite -- as a historian, i have to admire what they did. and it is in fact a very valuable source for students of diplomatic history to see what the embassy was reporting. some of my reporting is in there. some of it appeared -- some of the same reporting appeared on wickwikileaks. this is 1979 now. and i read it and i say well, that still holds up. when you see your reporting 25, 30 years later, sometimes it's embarrassing what you wrote, but it seems to hold up. >> john limbert, how long were

you behind the hard line? what was the process of the next couple of events? >> well, what happened was they got to the hard line. i think i mentioned this in the forward to my book. i ended up out, in a decision that was probably one of the worst of my career -- i ended up outside the door attempting to talk them down or to slow them down. that obviously did not work. they pulled a -- they had a gun on me and a gun on our security officer and threatened to shoot us both if the door was not opened in five minutes. i've often pointed to that incident as probably my worst example of negotiations in my

career. >> so that said, did the door get opened in five minutes? >> unfortunately, it did. or at least i thought -- were they bluffing, i don't know. but i'm glad. i don't know. i think it was perhaps the ambassador who was at the foreign ministry and swift, who was the senior person at the area, but the door -- they did open the door which was, to me at the time, quite a relief. >> so how long were you held in the embassy? where else were you held? what does that experience mean to you personally now? >> okay. we were held 14 months in various places. >> around tehran? >> around tehran. outside of tehran, after the failed rescue attempt in april of 1980. i was moved to espahon, a city about 300 miles south. others were moved to other

places. they were obviously worried about another rescue attempt. after i came back from espahon in august, i believe, we never went back to the embassy, stayed in various places. some prisons and other places around tehran. >> how were you treated? >> not very well. it's interesting. the iranians themselves, many have a narrative that says we were treated well. we were not. i was of the -- of the 14 months i was nine months in solitary, with very little communication with the outside world. i wasn't killed. i wasn't -- you know, obviously i wasn't killed, i wasn't beaten up because this was very clear.

this was not about us. this was an internal iranian matter, and factions within the revolution the hard-core was using us to go after its rivals, particularly the nationalists, the liberals the intellectuals the religious intellectuals those who might not be hard-core enough for this revolution. and they did it. i mean, they used us to get at their -- to marginalize their enemy, throw their enemies out of the government. reflecting back on it, i have often said this publicly, that the main victims of this whole affair were the iranian people. what happened to us was difficult.

it was uncomfortable. it was frightening at times, particularly for our families, who didn't have word. but the long-term victims, i think, were the iranians, because what this whole incident did was to create a climate of government without rule, anarchy, and mob rule, where simply laws, procedures did not apply. and anyone who could organize a street mob, the stronger street mob, would prevail. and even today the authorities crack down -- feel they can imprison anyone who questions what they are doing, whether that be a lawyer, a journalist,

a filmmaker a translator, a member of the intelligentsia. and it was this particular action which set the kind of climate that allowed this repression. it also gave the green light, i think, to saddam hussein to start this very destructive war against iran, using poison gas with tremendous effect. >> you mean the green light because he thought america would support this? >> not just support it, but he saw iran had isolated itself. iran had -- when saddam hussein invaded in september of 1980, iran had no friends. the arab countries in the region with the exception of

syria, the united states, other western countries basically either actively supported iraq or sat on the sidelines, in a -- in a shameful incident, and i say this with all candor, even when saddam used poison gas against the iranians, there was very little protest or reaction. we cozied up to saddam hussein during all this. well, this was all a climate set by these events. we were willing, before the embassy was taken, the united states was willing to continue some kind of a military-to-military relationship with the iranians, maybe not as vast as it was under the shah, but we had sold or had in the pipeline vast

quantities of military equipment, training, spare parts, all of these things. we would have liked to continue it. the embassy seizure obviously stopped all of that, and iran, consequently, was in a much weaker position, vis-a-vis the invaders. >> iraq invaded september 1980. you were not released until january 1981. >> that's right. >> so what did you know of that iraq-iran war, where you were? did you know anything? and what do you remember about the release and coming back? >> here is the chronology, as best i can reconstruct it. sometime in august -- this was after the shah died. the shah died late july. >> 1980. >> 1980.

in august, the ayatollah khomeini calls in his advisors, his closest advisors, and says, we need to settle the hostage dispute, and he assigns people to do it. i believe it was early september when deputy secretary of state warren christopher meets with an iranian counterpart a relative by marriage of ayatollah khomeini's son. they meet in germany and basically they have a deal. the outlines of the deal are there. the war comes, and the contact is lost. originally the germans had been the intermediaries. eventually, the contact is reestablished. but it takes months of difficult bargaining. a team led by deputy secretary

christopher with the very skilled mediation of the algerians to bring about our release. the release came just after jimmy carter had left office and just after ronald reagan had taken his oath of office. >> was that coincidental? >> of course not. obviously this was a last slap at jimmy carter. i mean, the iranians had figured they had cost him his presidency. now they were going to deny him this particular satisfaction of seeing our release while he was still president. there is a conspiracy theory that said there was in fact coordination between the iranian side and the republican -- the

reagan campaign of 1980, to prevent us from being released before the election. it's an interesting theory. i've never seen any documentation for it. i would think, after 30-some years, something -- if there was anything to it, something would have come out. >> where did you fly out of, on what kind of plane? do you remember seeing your fellow hostages? what was the reaction? >> these things i remember well. as i get older, peter, sometimes i can't remember where i left my car keys in the morning, but i can remember these things of 32 years ago. i remember well. we went to the -- they took us to the airport. >> in tehran? >> in tehran. i was in buses. i think i was blindfolded. but i think they shoved me into the bathroom of the bus, not out of any spite just because that was the only room that was there. but it didn't matter to me.

i was happy to ride on the roof or the baggage compartment if we were leaving. >> did you know you were leaving at that point? >> yes. we knew -- i mean, you don't know until you're actually out. but we had been visited the night before by a group of algerian medical people. and we knew the algerians were mediating. and although the iranians tried to convince us that only some of us were going and that statements we made to their television, in an interview about presumably how nice we were treated and how happy we were would determine whether we stayed or went. but the algerians gave that away and said, no, no, you're all going. so we knew. we got to the airport. there were algerian airlines, 727's, i believe which were

there on board. when i got on the plane i saw ambassador langeen for the first time in 14 months. i saw the swiss ambassador there, ambassador eric lange was there checking our names off his list against his list, making sure that everybody was there. there were some iranian reporters there. but after a while, they closed the door, and we took off. i know people have different opinions of the algerian airline, but i'm a great fan. >> so john limbert, given all this history from 33 years ago what have we learned about iran and negotiating with iran and the current situations that we

find ourselves in with iran? >> i would like to say peter that we have learned something. but i'm not sure what we've learned. i mean, if you look at our relations today, they are not very good. and we're right now in a very -- we and the iranians are in a very dangerous place. there's a lot of talk of war. there's a lot of talk about air strikes, a lot of talk about an iranian nuclear program. being the eternal optimist that i am i didn't think we would be in such a bad place, even after what had happened in 1979 and '80. when we flew out of tehran on those planes, if you had asked me, i would have said in five years, seven years, ten years at the most, tempers will cool.

we and the iranians will realize that we have mutual interests, that we have things to talk about with each other not necessarily as friends but as countries, as states do, because we talk to many states with which we are not friendly with. from time to time, we talk to north korea. we talk to syria. we talk to many places. but it hasn't happened. it's a very unusual and almost unique situation that we're in with iran, where this estrangement this inability to talk to each other, has gone on now for 32 years. and despite efforts to change the relationship, to break it i

think this president, president obama, made a very sincere effort to begin a process of engagement, to begin some kind of talk, even without -- even if we don't approve or don't like or don't agree with many things with the islamic republic. he made the effort, starting at the very beginning of his administration, spoke about it during his campaign of 2008, took a lot of criticism from it, including from the current secretary of state mrs. clinton. but it hasn't gone anywhere. and we seem to be just about where we've always been. i compare us to two sides on

opposite sides of an abyss, glaring at each other across this abyss, calling each other names, insulting each other threatening each other. and this has been a very difficult pattern to break. and what i see today, what i hear today is that both sides have fallen into patterns that are familiar to them. we know how to do this. people in tehran know how to bash us. we know how to bash the islamic republic. and we're good at it. both sides have gotten good at it over 30 years. what we do not know how to do is to break out of what the late richard cottems said, that back

in the 80's, he said that the u.s. and iran are in a downward spiral. and what we don't know how to do apparently is to break out of it. so we are unable to do that. perhaps it's too hard for us. perhaps it's beyond the capabilities, the diplomatic capabilities of either side. perhaps the current downward spiral or threatening situation perhaps it suits the interests of various parties. but whatever it is it's familiar. and it's comfortable. and when we encounter difficulties, as we always do, it's very easy to revert back to this traditional dysfunctional kind of action, which if not

productive is at least familiar. >> have you been back to tehran? >> i have not. i have not been back since -- >> have you thought about it? >> i have often thought about it. i have not been back since january of 1981. i would very much like to go back. this not going back is not by choice. i am not welcome. inside iran, there are many iranians who are prevented from leaving. i think i'm in a smaller category of people who are prevented from entering. perhaps what i would most like to do is to take my children and grandchildren back there. we have two children that are iranian americans. their mother is iranian. they were both born there. >> so you are married to an

iranian? >> yes. yes. 46 years now. so we have two -- >> did you meet her in tehran? >> i met her in kurdistan many years ago. we were both teachers there. so at the time of the revolution we had been married 13 years and had two children already. and the children remember iran. they have wonderful memories of good times there. and now they have their own children who are one-quarter iranian and probably about all -- the only relation they have now is their grandmother's cooking. but i would very much like for them to see that part of their origins. >> john limbert, was your family there in november 1979? >> fortunately, they were not. some of them -- some of my in-laws were there and were able

to get out. my wife and children did not come to tehran. it was what in the foreign service we call an uncompanied post, a post without family. they stayed in -- we had been in saudi arabia before, and they stayed on in saudi arabia, which was a very good place for them. and it was a great relief for me, being captive, knowing that they were safe and in a secure place. >> and finally any ptsd issues? >> none that i'm aware of. i know these things are not easy for some people. as you can tell probably, peter perhaps my therapist therapy is talking about it and talking about these issues. once in a while, things come

back about the incident. but as i said to you the damage done to us, i think, was much less than what was done to our iranian friends and relatives. >> and we've been talking on book tv with professor john limbert, author of this book, "negotiating with iran: wrestling the ghosts of history" history." you're watching book tv on c-span 2. >> on history bookshelf, hear from the countries best known american history writers of the decade every saturday. and to watch these programs anytime, visit our website c-span.org/history. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> all weekend, american history tv is joining our comcast cable partners to showcase the history of colorado springs, colorado. to learn more, visit

c-span.org/localcontent. and we continue now with our look at the history of colorado springs. this is american history tv on c-span 3. >> nikola tesla became fascinated with this new creation going on in the world electricity. when he came to this country, he started working right away with thomas edison. but there was some conflict there, because what developed is what's referred to as the current wars, because edison was very committed to using direct current, and tesla understood that alternating current was more